An Exchange of Words: David B. Coe’s Weblog

So, for the second time in about three months one of our credit cards has been hacked.  Weird things about it:  First, it was the new credit card that we got after the last one was hacked.  (We have several cards, but this is the only one that seems to be giving us trouble.)  Second, the false charges put on the credit card last time were for about $2,000.00 each and were charged at bike shops in Europe.  This time the false charge was for about $1,500.00 and was charged (wait for it….) at a bike shop in Europe.  And both times, we had put in a legitimate charge at one online seller in particular about three weeks before the problem arose.  I can’t prove this last connection so I’m not going to give the name of the online merchant, but be careful who you order from, and if you can, place your orders by phone rather than over the net.

Tune in tomorrow for a new political cartoon from my friend Bryan Prindiville and me. 

Another good week, abbreviated though it was.  6000 words; 25 pages.  

I leave tonight for Richmond, Virginia where I’ll be attending RavenCon.  I have a panel tomorrow at 4:00 pm and I lose an hour to a time change along the way.  So it’s either leave tomorrow morning at about 5:00 am, or I get part of the drive out of the way this evening.  I don’t like waking up that early….

Tune in to http://magicalwords.net tomorrow for a guest post by Alethea Kontis, Ingram buyer by day, New York Times bestselling author by night!

And, yes, I will be giving away a BOW Award on Saturday.

Today’s post, “My Shiny New Toy,” can be found at http://magicalwords.net.  Check it out, and enjoy!

Bit of a scare this morning.  Our younger daughter woke up complaining of a stomach ache.  Her tummy was tender to the touch, she was having trouble walking without it hurting, and she had a fever.  Nancy and I assumed appendicitis.  So I called our pediatrician and described what was happening, and they reached the same conclusion.  Long story short:  I took her in and spent the morning shuttling back and forth between the doctor’s office and the hospital (x-rays and blood work).  Turns out the blood tests were negative and a closer examination and the x-rays convinced the doctor that it wasn’t her appendix.

She’s feeling a bit better now, though her fever is higher.  We’re starting to suspect that the stomach ache isn’t the cause of the fever (although the fever might be causing the stomach ache).  Anyway, it was scary there for a little while — I really didn’t want my kid to have to deal with surgery. 

We’ve had a rough start to the year, though I know that others have had it far worse.  But between my older daughter’s pneumonia and this, I’ve spent way too much time taking kids to the hospital recently.  No more, thank you.

Still managed to get my 1,500 words written this afternoon.  I’m almost far enough along on this new book to start putting up one of those word-o-meter graph things that other writers have.  I’ll have to figure out how to do that.

Finished chapter 1.  Only 23 more to go (give or take…)  

My friends at MagicalWords.net (Faith Hunter, C.E. Murphy, and Misty Massey) and I have been posting and commenting a lot recently about the difficulties inherent in writing as a profession.  Catie has been struggling with a book — she’s reached that point just past the middle where everything seems to fall apart, at least for a while.  I have the same problem with every book I write.  Just about 60% of the way through I come to the conclusion that the book sucks, that I’m a hack, and that I really ought to be doing something else with my life.  Then I find a way past whatever problem had me stumped, and by the time I’m done I’m convinced that it’s the best book I’ve ever written.

I struggled a bit with this first chapter, as I always do.  I’m sure the second and third will give me some trouble, too, but then I’ll find a rhythm with the story and everything will be fine.  Misty and Faith post all the time about how important it is to get past whatever troubles they’re having, put their butts in the chair, and write.

Writing is hard.  It’s work.  Books are not so much products of talent as they are products of perseverence.  During the course of writing a novel I can find a thousand things that could convince me to stop writing.  I get frustrated with a plot line that doesn’t go where I want it to.  Even as I hone my craft, I still see flaws in my writing that discourage me and make me want to chuck the whole thing.  I get tired of all the craziness inherent in the publishing business.  I wish I was making more money.  Blah, blah, blah. 

But for all these reasons why I could quit, there’s really only one that keeps me going:  I have to finish the story.  I have to finish it for me, I have to finish it for my characters.  Yesterday, Faith compared writers to mountaineers and marathoners.  Both are good analogies.  Runners finish the marathon despite the pain because quitting is unthinkable.  Mountain climbers reach the summit for the same reason.  In my opinion, that’s why writers finish books.  I can’t run a marathon and I don’t have the strength or the drive to climb Denali.  But I’ll be damned if I will let myself be beaten by a book.

Late post today, which may be a taste of things to come.  I started writing a new book this morning.  (Yay!)  Book three of the Blood of the Southlands trilogy (no title yet).  And I think that rather than blog first and then turn to the book, I need to get my quota done for the book before I allow myself to blog.  We’ll see.

Anyway, this was a good day.  I usually struggle with the first pages of a book.  I can spend a couple of days on the first page or two.  But a scene kind of presented itself to me last night, so this morning I knew pretty much how to start the thing.  I still only a wrote a small bit — about a thousand words.  But for a first day on a first chapter, that’s pretty good.

So I rewarded myself by making a big pot of chili.  It’s cooking now — the whole house smells like chipotle and bell peppers and cumin.  Spring has come to Tennessee, but it’s rainy and just a little raw today.  Good chili weather and probably the last that we’ll have before the warm weather sets in.

A new book.  A pot of chili.  All I need is a beer and I’ll be set.  Think I’ll see to that now.

Today’s music:  Pat Metheny (Day Trip)

My local newspaper ticked me off this morning.  At least half of it did.  For those of you who don’t know, the Chattanooga Times-Free Press used to be two papers, one progressive, the other conservative.  The papers merged and since neither editorial board was willing to cede control of content or opinions to the other, they both maintained (and continue to maintain) editorial pages.  Anyway, the conservative side of the paper was attacking Barack Obama today for saying that he thought the United States should use foreign aid funds to combat world poverty.  According to the paper, Obama’s proposal would cost up to $865 billion over 13 years.  Nevermind that the war in Iraq, which this side of the paper supports wholeheartedly, would cost more than twice that amount over the same period.  Wouldn’t combatting poverty be a better use of our treasure and power?  Isn’t it possible that we’d be thought of better throughout the world if we were as generous with food and medicine as we are aggressive with guns and bombs?

My daughter (the older one) is reading the Constitution and Bill of Rights for homework.  And because it’s densely written, and because Dad has a Ph.D. in history, we’ve been going through it together whenever she has trouble deciphering a section.  Reading it through once more, explaining to her what the clauses mean and why they’re important, I’m struck repeatedly by the genius of the Founders.  In particular I was struck by the following clause in Article I, Section 8, which gave Congress the power “To promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.”  My daughter thought it very cool that the copyright I enjoy on my books is provided for in the Constitution.  I thought it was cool that our Founders so prominently recognized the importance of the arts and sciences, even if our current leaders do not.

One of my dearest friends from college, Carla Wise, a brilliant, wonderful woman who has studied science and ecology for years and years, is now making a go of writing professionally.  Her focus is on sustainable agriculture and the local foods movement.  Here’s a link to her latest blog post, which is well worth reading:  http://eatdrinkbetter.com/

Today’s post can be found at either www.sfnovelists.com or www.magicalwords.net

Navigate to one of those sites and check it out.

Today’s music:  Larry Carlton (Fire Wire)

Great post today (rant, really) on the blog of fellow author Jim Hines (http://jimhines.livejournal.com).  I heartily recommend it.  And it got me thinking….

We writers are an odd bunch.  On the one hand, we constantly seek out community of one sort or another.  We look for workshops, writing groups, online communities where we can discuss issues of process and creativity (I’m involved with two right now — http://www.sfnovelists.com/ and http://magicalwords.net/), and any other way we can think of to meet up with our own kind.

At the same time, though, we tend toward professional jealousy, genre and subgenre rivalry, and, at times, open hostility toward those who have, in our opinion, achieved commercial or critical success that exceeds our own despite the obvious literary shortcomings of their work.  Clearly, some of this territoriality is understandable.  There are a finite number of publishing slots; bookstores can only stock so many books; there are only a handful of awards given out each year; the short fiction market is shrinking.  We are, on one level, in competition with one another.

But it seems to me that we gain more from our communal impulses than we do from the competitive ones.  Jim’s post, quite apart from the humor, raises a crucial point:  our chances of being published and, by extension, being successful with our books, have much more to do with what we write than with any external factor.  Yes, if my books fail, there are dozens of writers-in-waiting eager to take my publishing slot.  But by the same token, if my books are successful — commercially and artistically — and one or three or ten or those writers-in-waiting produce books that also show potential for success in the eyes of their editors, all of us will be published. 

I am not immune from the jealousies I mentioned before.  Far from it.  And I am as likely as any other writer to whine about wanting more publicity, better bookstore placement, more prominent reviews.  But I guess Jim helped me see, at least for today, that if I want to claim my successes as my own, I’d better be willing to do the same with my failures.  And chances are that’ll be easier as part of a community whose members understand the highs and lows of this profession as intimately as I do.

Today’s music:  Mark Whitfield (7th Avenue Stroll)

Today’s post can be found at http://magicalwords.net/.

A blog post about blogging.  Check it out.